A Book of Traveller's Tales

A well put together chronology of travel writing with the first chapter being called Advice on Travelling. This follows with a chapter each on Africa, Europe, Great Britain and Ireland, Near Asia, Middle Asia, Far Asia, North America, Central and South America and the Caribbean, Australia and New Zealand and finally The Artic and The Antarctic.
The changes in advice to travellers when comparing this day and age is obviously going to leave one shaking their head or laughing at the sheer strangeness of advice from the past. We get the likes of Samuel Johnson telling us that “...travel has its advantages...” but he complained about books on travel and then travel itself as it “......will end likewise in disappointment...”
Prince Herman Puckler-Muskau told us that people of Naples were to be treated “brutally”. W B Lord and Thomas Baines gave advice as to dying of thirst in the desert. John Hatt on farting!

On Africa Suetonius Paulinus was an early writer as he was the first Roman General to advance some miles past the Atlas Mountains. Ibn Battuta, is well worth reading and not just for his contribution here. I recall him being quoted in other books I have read. In this compendium he tells of being protected from a crocodile by one local and also the difficulty of purchasing a female slave. English adventurer Andrew Battel alone is worth a read about such were his life adventures. Some names I recognised from my school days, Mungo Park and David Livingstone to name but a couple. We get wit shining through from a night with a Boer Meester via a certain William J. Burchell. Alexander Kinglake tells of Cairo and the plague in 1835. Not much changes when it comes to our world and pandemics through the age. Richard Lemon Lander tells of his ordeal by poison that had a wow effect on this reader. Later Sir Cecil Beaton meets the Rolling Stones in Marrakesh. I laughed out loud at him describing Jagger having “...hangers-ons, chauffeurs and Americans” A bit of British upper middle class snobbery coming to the fore.

Europe was mostly covered by English writers. George Turbeville wrote a poem about the Ruses and Giles Fletcher about their baths. Thomas Coryate is worth reading about such was his life's adventures. He was quite the celebrity in his day. John Evelyn, the other diarist, wrote of galleys in Marseilles and Thomas Gray wrote some nonsense about the “littleness” of Versailles! There is more to Edward Gibbon than the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Arthur Young wrote on French cooking. William Beckford's life is worth a read let alone his contribution to this compeduim. I enjoyed Shelly and his writing of Rome and Astolphe was a French writer who travelled to and wrote about Russia where we should “inspect nothing without a guide”. Robert Curzon wrote of Mount Athos and the “tomecide” that occurred in the monastery. As we get closer to our era Norman Douglas tells of the women of San Giovanni and Cecil Beaton appears again in Budapest. Lawrence Durrell and the superb Patrick Leigh Fermor also get to tell a tale.

Great Britain and Ireland begins with Greek navigator Pytheas around the isles 300 odd years BC. Strabo, another Greek writes of Ireland in the time of Christ. Dutch merchant Emanuel Van Meteren is not that impressed with the English in about 1575 as they are “...weak and tender...” and are also “...suspicious of foreigners, whom they despise.” Fynes Moryson an English traveller in Ireland circa 1600 thought the Irish drunks. Cesar De Saussure thinks the English a danger to foreigners during Lord Mayor's Day celebration's calling the revellers “insolent and Rowdy” and calling them the most “cursed brood in existence” with all those thought foreign called “French Dogs” no matter where they were from. German traveller Carl Phillip Moitz thought his coach ride in 1782 from Leicester to Northampton as something he would never forget as it seemed a prospect of certain death. William Cobbett in 1821 called Cricklade in Wiltshire a “villainous hole” such did he dislike the rural poor of that village. French soldier and politician, François de La Rochefoucauld, on the other hand spent a day in an English country house in the late 1700's happy with his time with the upper classes though did comment that “very often I have heard things mentioned in good society which would be in the grossest taste in France”.

Near Asia starts with Greek historian, Xenophon, discussing “The Retreat of the Ten Thousand” approximately 350 years BC. Saints Paul and Willibald get to write about their travels. Italian Ludovico Di Varthema writes on the Mamelukes love life in the early 1500's. Sir Richard Francis Burton in July 1853 had himself circumcised so as to cross the Arabian Peninsula and set of for Mecca. Edward Granville Browne had problems with local dialect in 1888 while traveling in Persia.
T. E Lawrence tells of the streets of Jeddah and Evelyn Waugh the problems with boy scouting in Aden. Geoffrey Bibby writes of Dilmun archaeology with the Sheik of Bahrain in 1954.

Middle Asia starts with Alexander the Great not knowing when to stop. Oderic of Pordenone, an Italian friar, tells of Tibet in the late 1200's. No book of this type could leave out a few words from Marco Polo nor should it leave out the remarkable Ibn Battuta, that amazing Arab traveller from the 1300's, who I really should read further. The previously mentioned Thomas Coryate tells of spending only a “pennie sterling a day” on his travels “betwixt Jerusalem and this Moguls' Court” and Edward Terry tells of Coryates eventual death. Evariste Regis Huc, a French Lazarist missionary, tells of the first Kalon in Lhassa looking at a flea under a microscope in 1846. Hungarian Arminius Vambery tells of the terrifying Kara Kum, the black sands, on his way to Khiva. English soldier Frederick Burnaby caused shock in Khiva when he mentioned he was not married. Sir George Scott Robinson writes of his visit in 1890 visit to Kafirstan where he thought the women immoral. Sven Hedin, a Swedish Geographer, tells of his crossing of the Takla Makan desert and the hardships than came from that journey. Compendium complier Eric Newby throws in one of his own tales and US former Korean War veteran tells a fun tale of contraceptives on a Pan AM flight leaving Bangkok to Bengal.

Far Asia begins with Fa-Hsien, a Chinese Buddhist monk who was an early Chinese traveller and he is followed about 300 years later by compatriot Hsuan-Tsang. Flemish monk William of Rubruck tells of an audience with Mangu Khan in 1254 and after we get the more noted Marco Polo. Ibn Battuta reappears with the telling of a meeting with the Sultan of Mul-Jawa where he witnesses a slave kills himself by decapitation as a declaration of love to the Sultan. The Sultan was present and with that Ibn Battuta writes that he “withdrew from the audience.” Italian traveller tells of the eating of human flesh on Java. Engelbert Kaempfer, a German doctor tells of the poisonous Blower fish when he made visit to Japan in the 1690's. Russian explorer Nikolao Mikailovich Prejevalsky feels the cold nights on the Mongolian Plateau. Englishman Sir Osbert Sitwell made visit to Angkor Thom in 1937. US traveller Oliver Statler tells of dinner at the twenty fifth temple while visiting Japan in the 1970's.

North America starts with Leif Ericsson the Norseman who was the first known European to go to the northern continent. Columbus and Da Verrazano are the other early travellers that get included. Jacques Cartier in the 1530's described his outrage that the Hurons having religious beliefs that he did not. Petro De Castaneda, a Spanish Conquistador, describes seeing a bison for the first time. English navigator Philip Amadas describes Virginia, John White tells of the lost colony of Roanoke while Claude Jean Allouez, a French Jesuit Missionary, paddled into Ottawa. Later Mederic Saint-Mery has views on American women of the late 1790's. Pretty with eyes that are alive but wan complexions and bad teeth. Lewis and Clark get included as does Frances Trollope who describes slavery in the southern states. We also get some writing from John Charles Fremont about the Rockies, G D Warburton on St Johns being the fishiest capital in the world and Henry David Thoreau on camping in the Maine Woods. US Rancher Bruce Siberts writes of Fort Pierre in South Dakota having only “a few good people”...”...some argued 15 or 18, but others said the estimate was too high.” Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance describes meeting white man. US hobo Hood River Blackie, aka Ralph Gooding, made good reading about Running Away in 1940.

Central and South America starts with Amerigo Vespucci as he describes his encounters with the locals in Mexico who are “neither Moors nor Jews” and “.....their living is very barbarous, because they do not eat at fixed times,...”. Magellan and Castillo describe the early European exploration of the southern continent. Hans Stade of Hesse, a German sailor, describes his suffering when captured by the Tupinamba people of Brazil in 1547. The English via Chaplain to Drake, Francis Fletcher, along with Walter Raleigh and John Chilton give us details of their adventures with Miles Phillips telling of the cruel judgement of the Inquisition in 1574. Naturalists such as Alexander Von Humbolt and Charles Waterton, Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace and Henry Walter Bates describe everything from mosquitoes to earthquakes. English traveller Henry Nelson Coleridge describes his time in the West Indies trying to cure his rheumatism. US ship officer Ellery Scott witnesses the eruption of Mount Pelee while Aldous Huxley is disappointed in a pitch lake in Trinidad. Patrick Leigh Fermor reappears through this time in Guadeloupe.

Australia and New Zealand starts off with early Dutch navigator Jan Carstenzoon describing aboriginal encounters in 1623 and compatriot Abel Tasman in 1642 with his report on Tasmania. The English follow with Dampier and Cook. Russian navigator Fabian Gottlieb Von Bellingshausen describes the sober nature of Maoris in New Zealand. Exploration of the Australian interior by Charles Sturt and Peter Warburton makes for interesting reading as does Anthony Trollope's observations on the Australian “....sense of inferiority complex..” during his visit in 1871. Earnest Giles describes his issues with thirst while in the Gibson Desert while across the pond Samuel Butler claimed that “no one can mistake...” Mount Cook. I agree with him there! D H Lawrence describes Australia as “...a weird place.” But “...you get used to it.”

The Artic begins with Christopher Hall in 1576 giving an early view of Frobisher Bay and its inhabitants. Henry Morgan describes football with those inhabitants in 1586! Sir John Franklin is the first of many to describe hunger while exploring while Swedish explorer Nils Adolf Erik Nordenskjold spends time with the Chukchis in north eastern Siberia and notes the “fearful stench” as the locals “obeyed the calls of nature within the bedchamber”. Robert Edwin Peary describes his reaching of the North Pole. Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen explains his joy at meeting Frederick Jackson's parallel expedition in Franz Joseph Land. Canadian Vilhjamur Stefannsson writes of his love of his dogs and that to eat them “...would be but a step removed from cannibalism”
The Antarctic has US naval officer Charles Wilkes describing icebergs off Oates Land in 1840 while Norwegian Henrick Johan Bull, thought to be the first man to step onto the continent in 1895 calls it a “...strange and pleasurable...” place. Robert Falcon Scott on the other hand describes it as “awful” while Roald Amundsen is the first man to reach the South Pole. Great explorers of the region represented include Earnest Shackleton, Douglas Mawson and Richard Evelyn Byrd.

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